Check out a very good op-ed by Flynt Leverett in today's New York Times, chronicling a number of Administration failures in dealing with Iran over the past five years but also suggesting that the U.S. and Europe now reinforce a Saudi call for a Gulf Security Council that would create a nuclear-weapons free zone across the Persian Gulf. The value to this approach, in addition to finding a way to engage Iran by other Muslim countries in ways less likely to allow the government to portray itself as the bulwark of nationalist resistance against the West, is that it offers the possibility of building additional collective institutions in the Middle East. Europe boasts the EU, NATO, the Organization for Security and Cooperation in Europe, the Council of Europe, the European Free Trade Area, and any number of smaller institutions engaging Nordic countries, Mediterranean countries, Easterna and Western countries. Such a fabric of overlapping institutions guarantees lots of forums for communication and negotiation and many different possibilities for resolving disputes and using persuasion and even pressure to reach cooperative outcomes. Taken together, these institutions create a European order, reinforcing common values and treaty obligations and providing a high degree of stability and predictability. Order-building is a strategy that the U.S. was adept at throughout the Cold War, but has recently abandoned. The Middle East would be a fine place to start again.